Eastern Sunsets
by icedcaffeine
Summary: Vampire hunters Leon and Sarai are on a mission of great importance: to kill the Cullens. They have been sent by Boss to kill them so they can keep having a job of killing vampires and in this recession... a person's gotta do what a person's gotta do...
1. Prologue

Prologue

Here I am, stuck in a prison surrounded by beakers and naïve teenagers. Yes, reader, I'm in chemistry class. How unfortunate. Two teenagers in particular are more annoying than the rest because they won't quit flirting with each other. Stupid girl.

Allow me to introduce myself. I have a lot of names, but because you're just that special, I'll give you my real name: Sarai. But because I'm living in a place that's full of typical white folks (excuse me, that may have been politically incorrect, but what do I care?), I have to go by Mary. Mary motherfucking Sue.

Anyway, this guy sitting to the right of me, sleeping with his eyes open? Yeah, I know him. I call him Leon. No one knows his real name except for the high-ups, so I decided to call him Leon, like Leon the Professional. He doesn't look like Jean Reno, but that's beside the point. He's French and he's an assassin. If you're really that curious, he has curly brown hair and green eyes. Amuse yourself with that. He also doesn't talk too much if he doesn't know you or doesn't like you, but when he does, his words are epic.

If Leon's an assassin, then what does that make me? Reader, I am a vampire hunter. Leon happens to be a triple-threat, though: assassin, vampire hunter, werewolf killer. Trust me, he knows his shit. He killed a man with a water bottle supposedly. How the hell would you kill a man with plastic? Yeah. Leon would know how.

Let me also add that I'm not in high school. I haven't been in high school since a little over four years ago. I was glad that I graduated and now I'm back in a public high school in small town Washington.

Forks, Washington, to be exact. Who the hell names a place Forks? Whatever. This place is so small and boring that my short orange hair is just about the most exciting thing here.

So what are an assassin and a vampire hunter doing in Forks, Washington?

Cue flashback.

"We must eliminate that family."

I exchanged a look with Leon, to which he shrugged silently.

"But why?" I asked Boss.

"Because they're damn rich and have old crap we can sell to museums," he lashed back, a small vein in his temple popping out.

"How noble of you."

As you can already tell, we're not very honest people. But hey, we have to pay for our supplies somehow besides our kill fees.

"And because they are ruining our reputation. They don't eat humans!" Boss shouted. "For all I know, it could become a damn trend and we'd be put out of business!"

"Sir, with all due rehspect," Leon interrupted in a slight French accent, which is now almost gone, "we are hunting them for… no prohfeit?"

"… No, we are not. We kill them for potential profit. If they continue gallivanting about with their 'OH WE DON'T WANT TO HARM HUMANS!'" –for this Boss waved his arms around in an interpretive dance- "we could lose so much money!"

Leon and I stood across from Boss and his desk, throwing glances of worry. Boss held his hands behind his back, staring outside through one of the windows that spanned his office. You'd think we would have a run-down, gypsy-like way of living.

"So… we have to track them down and kill them. Now for the million dollar question… where are they?"

"We have someone who will do the job for us," Boss replied. Oh thank God. "James!"

Leon and I immediately spun around. Oh, my Lord. James. He's been on our list for quite some time and for quite some time I've just never gotten around to killing him. Good thing too. This world can't spare a pretty jackass.

"Yeah?"

Boss turned around and faced the three of us. "I'm sure you've seen these two lurking around."

"More than once," James snarled, shrugging his jacket properly onto his back. "So, when the hell do we start?"

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Leon simply crossed his arms, bemused. "You already know about this?"

"Of course I do," he said with a sly grin.

"When do we stahrt?" Leon asked, popping his neck.

"Now. Go. Do your thing."

Back to the now.

Now you know why we're here. Leon and I are tracking down a certain vampire family. You may or may not have heard of them. James has, of course he has, and it's convenient that he doesn't exactly like them.

They go by the name Cullen.


	2. Chapter 1

The bell rang. About time. I threw my notebook and pens into my leather messenger, the best a girl can get, put it on one of my shoulders, and got up.

"Come on, Leon… hurry up."

"I'll hurry up when you quit hitting my foot," he said slowly as he gathered his materials and put them into his messenger. He slung the messenger across his chest and got out of his seat, not even bothering to tuck the chair back in. "Now we can go."

We left the classroom, continuing down the hallway, teenagers gawking. I was almost tempted to call them out. "It's rude to stare," I hissed at a lanky boy. "God this place is too clean."

Leon shrugged and continued on, shoving his hands into his snug leather jacket. Leon was literally the epitome of effortless cool that so many people tried to imitate. But all Europeans were born cool. Well, at least the ones I had met.

"So… what is it today, Leon? What new adventures wait for us?"

He grunted. "Can't cut class," he said while rubbing the bridge of his nose. He glared at nobody in particular, annoyed by the very fact that we were being paid by the amount of time spent in school, not by our services. What a sly man, that Boss of ours.

"You can do it, Leon!" I cheered on, shaking him back and forth to annoy him more. "Just a few more classes! I believe in you! Si se puede!"

He directed his glare at me. "It's a little Mexican humor there…"

"I know," he whispered harshly. "Fuck my life. Should've stayed in France…" Leon began to mutter quickly in French, his sentences whipping at speeds that would make auctioneers dizzy.

"If you stayed in France, you wouldn't have met me and I'm pretty damn sure our missions would have been quite boring," I ventured. "You know, like that time with the vampires in New Orleans?"

Leon grinned and shook his head. "During Mardi Gras?" For this, he said "Mardi Gras" the way a Frenchman would: nasally and full of spit. "Our semi-failed mission."

"_Your _semi-failed mission, _monsignor_ Leon. I did my job and killed them all. You got yourself shackled to a bed."

"Didn't mean I didn't enjoy it," he quickly threw in. "But it doesn't matter, they were dead after the sex, you know? So really, it was a huge success."

"Sure. See! Without me, that wouldn't have happened."

Leon shrugged. "Different place, different time. I'm in the mood to kill something," he added flatly.

"You know what? Fuck these last classes," I said defiantly. I shoved my hand into my bag and rummaged for my set of car keys. After a good minute or so while we kept walking down the hall, I finally found them. "We're gonna go kill something. Now hurry your ass up before we get caught," I said as I broke into something of a jog. Out the door and into the parking lot we went.

"Shit, where did I park?" I asked aloud, scratching my head, keys in hand. "Fuck I can't remember. Where is my baby…?"

"Your 'baby,' Leon answered, "should be next to the Volvo, remember? Jesus, Antarctica gets more sun than this place…"

"That doesn't help things because I don't remember where the stupid Volvo is either," I snapped. "And you're strangely right. AHA! There's my baby!"

To most people, an old car was parked peacefully in its place next to several newer cars, although the shine of said old car was far more spectacular than most. A wonder what a little turtle wax can do. But to Leon and I, this is our haven. Our escape. This is a midnight blue 1967 Ford Mustang Shelby GT with two trademark red lines running across the sides. This, reader, is my baby, Thor.

Now, you might be asking, If its name is Thor, why isn't yellow? Isn't Thor, like, the god of thunder or something? You're a good one reader if you figured that out. But you're even better if you managed to figure out the reference to Thor in Marvel. Brilliant job. Points for you. Leon and I made it a point to name our fleet of cars after the Avengers because, well, we're doing the world a favor and ridding it of villains known as vampires at the expense of your fun and violence. Also, we did it because it's fun trying too hard to be made of win and awesome.

Leon slipped into the passenger's side, putting his messenger bag onto the floor. Once inside, I threw him my bag. "Pedal to the medal, curious Georges on the loose," Leon warned, checking the rearview mirror.

"Yeah, yeah, buckle your seatbelts and all that." We both strapped ourselves in at the same time, awaking the mighty god Thor from his slumber. Shifting the gear into reverse, I started to pull out of my parking spot as quickly as possible. Less than ten seconds later, Thor flew out of the high school campus and sped down the street.

Leon turned on the radio; AC/DC started singing about how they were going to hell. "Such a fitting song," he said, popping open the glove compartment. I'll let you know that my glove compartment is actually much bigger than normal glove compartments, which would explain why explain why he was getting his gun out and loading it. Most guns would be light silver, but Leon's was custom-made out of black metal from a gunsmith that would rather remain anonymous. Stupid Frenchmen.

I saw Leon out of the corner of my eye point his gun outside. "Hey, keep that thing to yourself, we're gonna get pulled over if the cops see you."

Leon scoffed. "They should know better than to even question me." What a badass. "What are we murdering today?"

"I don't know… deer? It'll be painfully obvious if we kill a drifter or something. We'd have to go outside city limits though." I lowered the window and let my arm dangle out loosely. "Got a smoke?"

"Yeah, it's in my back pocket, hold on…" He unbuckled his seatbelt and arched upwards. We reached a stoplight in a timely manner as he tried to pry his cigarettes out of his back pocket. Leon's Sex Pistols shirt (which has enough history going back to the days of his father's youth) rode up, allowing me a lovely view of his deep-cut V-line and two of his probably eighteen abs.

"Liking the view?" Leon asked with a smirk. "It's green," he pointed out, not bothering with the seatbelt and handing me a cigarette. He pulled out another cigarette with his mouth from the box, throwing the box onto his bag.

"Light me," I ordered as I drove at a moderate speed down the street and past the intersection. A lighter magically appeared and burned off the edges of the paper. Soon enough, Thor was literally fuming. "Thanks." And the view got me all hot and bothered.

My cell phone began to ring in a riotous manner, to which I rolled my eyes and didn't want to answer. "Can you get that?"

Leon grabbed the iPhone from the outer flap of my messenger and pressed it to answer. "Yeah?"

"WHY ARE YOU NOT IN CLASS!?" I heard Boss roar over the phone that wasn't set to speaker. Damn, caught red-handed. Oh well.

"Because we can," Leon replied slickly, running his hand through his hair then taking a drag from the cigarette. "Are you okay with it?"

"LIKE FUCK I'M OKAY WITH IT! DO YOU THINK I'M PAYING YOU TO GO AROUND FUCKING JOYRIDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING DAY?!"

"Man, he's dropping a lot of F-bombs," I told Leon, taking a left turn. He rolled his eyes and pulled the phone away from his ear in annoyance.

"We're doing you a favor, we're off to kill deer," Leon said coolly. "Less deer, more murdered people, more jobs, more money."

Boss shut right up because he knew that Leon was right. Leon was a master catalyst too. He's good at a lot of things as you can tell. Hell, every girl that has ever laid eyes on him has gone off on him, therefore getting into fights with their boyfriends, therefore sitting their sorry asses down.

"Fine," Boss answered, sour. "But bring me the damn deer as proof."

"Yeah, whatever." Leon hung up and took another slow drag. "How far out are we heading?"

"Far, but not too far out. We're in the middle of fucking nowhere, shouldn't be too hard to find a mystical forest outside the city. Or," I began, a brilliant idea forming in my head, "we could go on the Cullens' hunting grounds. Don't we have the coordinates?"

"Yeah, in my bag," Leon said, grabbing his bag. When he opened it, he pulled out a black binder, flipping quickly through the pages. Leon, as if he wasn't badass enough, is extremely organized. He has to be. He can't afford to mix up his missions and mess up the head counts and rates. "I'm setting up the GPS."

"Good thinking."

"Continue straight," a mechanical woman announced.

"This place is so damn dead," Leon griped, letting the smoke escape his mouth. "Shouldn't even have put on my lucky shirt, attract all the wrong kinds of girls," he mumbled.

"Did the teachers call you out on the shirt?" I asked, holding my hand out of my car and tapping the butt of my cigarette.

"Turn left in one mile," the GPS said.

"One of them is a closet Sex Pistols fan, tried to hit on me." Another drag. "Got up and left class. Mostly looks of stern judgment."

I began to turn left when the GPS said so, because that was the logical thing to do. Leon sank into the seat and reclined the back, flicking out his cigarette. He stretched out, from what I could tell, and slipped his hands underneath that gorgeous head of hair of his. One more, his shirt rode up. Too bad I was driving.

If you haven't noticed, I have something of a platonic crush on him. His nose is sculpted perfection and if you didn't know him, you'd think you'd be seeing a young, curly-haired Chris Cornell. Except more ripped and deeper set eyes. You can't get away with having semi-buff arms when you're running around carrying 50-pound rifles and putting them together in record time.

"Couldn't sleep?"

"_Non_. Bad dreams kept waking me up." He started feeling up his abs, like any other guy with a decent set of abs would. "Tell me when we get there." He sighed deeply and sank into silence.

Fifteen, twenty minutes passed with nothing too interesting going on. Leon napped with a firm grip on his gun as though he was going to kill something in his sleep. I wouldn't put past him to pull it off. Now you might be wondering, how did a girl such as yourself get into this business? Actually, you probably weren't wondering, but I'm gonna tell you anyway. Because I could. No, reader, there was no traumatic past like the Winchesters, or a calling by a higher being like Van Helsing. I wanted to. Simple as that. Leon... well I can't say for him, but I bet he enjoys it as much as I do.

"You have arrived at ---"

"Shut up," Leon growled at his GPS quite suddenly. He groaned loudly mid-stretch and popped his neck, scrambling to get up without having the gun accidentally go off and kill one of us, namely himself. After putting the safety on, Leon put it in his bag as a backup plan.

I slowed down to a stop being ever-so-careful not to blow out one of Thor's tires, because then we'd be screwed among a bunch of half-angry vampires, which is worse than angry vampires or so experience tells me. "It's time to work," I said. I put Thor to sleep and both of us exited.

Through several connections, I got the upholstery changed to black leather and took out the back seats to make room for our weaponry. Backseat passengers can go screw themselves, they have no reason to be hanging out with us anyway unless they have a death wish. Most people would see an elevated area behind the two front seats and wouldn't make much of it. Ah, but you see, there's a trick to it. I will show you.

I opened the backseat door, as did Leon, but on the other side. Both of us made fists and began to hit the edges of the "storage bin," as we like to call it. The code to open the bin was to bang the center of the edge in a triangle, twice on the bottom left, once at the top center, and twice again on the bottom right. Both ends flew upward, revealing my very favorite weapon: A Savage Model 99 hunting rifle. Hell yes, reader, I mean business when it comes to deer hunting. "Hey, you have my bag?" I asked Leon. "Need to put my bullets somewhere."

"Yeah, I got it," he answered as he loaded up another hunting rifle, except his is a Marlin Model 336, customized black, like the rest of his arsenal. Box of bullets and rifle in hand, I closed the bin and the backseat door, meeting Leon next to the trunk of my car. "Take the bag, I've got enough to deal with mine." And so I did, putting the small cardboard box of bullets in the bag to join my binoculars and a spare scope in case of anything.

"We're having deer for dinner tonight too," I reminded him. Leon scoffed and shook his head as we walked into the forest not-so-silently. He had swung his rifle behind his back to put on a pair of black leather gloves. He stretched his fingers out as far as he could to adjust the gloves for maximum movement, cracking his knuckles while he was at it. "So, what's the plan?"

"There are eight Cullen vampires, if I remember correctly," he began. "All assumptions right and in order, each kills one deer every month. Watch out, deer crap."

"Wha- OH!" I sidestepped the excrement with a bit of a fumble. "Thanks, man."

"Anyway. Plan is, we kill enough to put them a year behind. Take back one as our prize, the rest we can drain their blood and leave them, or sell them."

"You're saying we have to massacre roughly 64 deer."

"Exactly what I'm saying."

Birds chirped away in the the treetops over us, some sounding much farther away than others. A few twigs snapped underneath our shoes and dry leaves cracked with every step. An owl would occasionally hoot in the distance as we continued further into the half-dead, half-humid forest. I spotted something move very slowly between the trees. I slowed my pace down and aimed with my rifle so I could get a good view of whatever it was with the scope mounted on it. One lonesome deer stood slightly bewildered, deciding if it should go straight or turn around, or nothing at all. Two seconds later, it laid sprawled across the grass with a bullet through its heart. "Guess we better start."

"Chingao, this fucker is heavy! How many deer does this put us at?" I dragged that bad boy to the pile of dead deer we had started making in one of the clearings near Thor, which started to attract a lot of flies and that annoyed me greatly.

"67 in this pile," Leon said with a bit of difficulty, breathing heavily as he pulled one of the deer from the top and threw it aside. "Time to get dirty." He knelt down next to the deer and slit its throat with a knife sharp enough to surgically remove an eyeball. The blood trickled along the edge faster and faster with every additional bit of pressure he put to open the gash wider. "Start draining the rest except for the buck, that one we take."

I sat down next to the freshly-killed dear to gather my breath and wipe off the sweat off my forehead, staring at Leon. His arms... oh God his arms. They tensed up as he grabbed another deer by its two knobby front legs. The grime and beads of sweat almost slathered across them made me want to jump him right here, right now. "Get off your ass," he said flatly. "We're gutting those bitches too."

My jaw dropped, the fantasy dissipating into darkness. "Hell no I'm not gutting a damn deer! I've seen some sick shit in my life and I've done it too, but I've never gut anything, let alone a deer!"

"Fine. You drain the deer," he pointed with his bloody knife, "I'll cut them open."

"I like it when you get all... commanding," I said in something of a jesting tone, grabbing my knife from my bag and getting up at the same time, scanning for the deer I had just left. Ah, there you are, you fatass, breaking my back and screwing my arms up.

"Not just you, chere," he replied with a broad grin. "Shut up and slit throats."

"That's... very artistic of you, Leon. Just let out that inner Parisian."

"Art. Humor. Same shit. And I'm not even from Paris."

"Really? ...Wow."

"Yeah, whatever..."

"Let's go, Joker, before Batman finds you."

"The Joker always gets away."

I had to agree. The Joker never really did die, not in the movie, not in most of the comics, not anywhere. We took one last look at his marvelous mess of intestines, spleens, lungs, whatever innards had been set down in a picture of two eyes and the Bat Signal for a mouth with a message underneath that read, "Why So Serious?" and headed out. We had already loaded up our rifles and the buck, so it was a clean getaway we made. Well, except for the organs and the deer at the bottom of some lake, of course.


	3. Chapter 2

Thankfully, it was a Saturday. We didn't have to get up early because there was no school and there was really no point in stalking the Cullens because, well, it's just pointless. As far as we knew, all they did was play baseball. Leon and I watched them play once and neither of us could find amusement in it. We both agreed that golf or chess was more exciting than baseball.

We did make it a point, though, to go out to their mystical little field of theirs, set up a badass audio system, if I do say so myself, and made a playback of thunderclaps every time they hit a baseball. It's the simple, expensive things in life, really.

We lived pretty far from the high school, which was the smartest move Boss has pulled during this entire operation. Our rooms are on opposite ends of the house and between the two rooms were a TV lounge sort of thing with a pool table, a kitchen fully stocked with alcohol and ridiculous amounts of protein for Leon's particular diet.

I sauntered down into the kitchen at what I'd like to estimate was 11 AM in pajama shorts and a flimsy tank top with a half-zipped black hoodie over it. Leon was already up, still in his pajama pants and a crappy, ridiculously tight shirt, and was setting up a pot of coffee. "_Bonjour, chere_," Leon said, stepping away from the coffee machine and pulling out two mugs from the glass cabinet above it. Our one-story house was pretty modern, you know, chrome and glass and all that, and most people didn't believe us when we said we were guns for hire. Actually, they didn't believe us period, house or not, so Leon decided we should just both pretend to be models. He's so vain.

"Morning, dear," I replied as I scavenged through one of the tall cabinets that stored all sorts of food, including my breakfast of Cocoa Puffs. Leon had, as I barely noticed, put an egg on the fryer for himself. He stirred the egg around with a whisker quickly and with precision. "Sleep well last night?" I asked, opening another cabinet and pulling a bowl out next to the box.

"_Oui_," Leon answered. "You?"

"So-so. Bambi pranced around in my dreams with his entrails spilling out. Good times. Hey, coffee's ready. Milk?" I opened the refrigerator and pulled out the whole milk.

"Need it black," he replied flatly, serving the scrambled egg onto a clean plate.

"Suit yourself, more milk for my cereal to drown in. These today's papers?"

"Yeah, check the local paper, might find something interesting on the cover."

As I sat down and mixed my cereal to make chocolate milk, I set apart the New York Times and the Washington Post from the local paper. I grinned wildly.

"Good thing this is in color to get the full effect."

"Need to change the plates," he said when he set the two mugs of coffee down. "They got the number somehow without pictorial evidence." He then sat down with his plate of eggs and fork, chopping them up further, making the vapor float up and away. "Probably the seer girl, Alice or whatever."

"Don't call her a seer, it makes her sound more mystical than she deserves to be." I spooned some of the cereal and let the milk drip from the bottom. "We'll just play it cool and indecisively pick a new set from so many. It's great having these loopholes."

"Fantastic, really."

We continued wordlessly with our breakfast, Leon reading the New York Times and I reading The Washington Post. "We should get a subscription to the other coast." He shrugged and kept reading the World section, thoroughly engrossed in the happenings in his native Europe. I started to miss home, and not this home, but where I was born. The whole "home is where the heart is" crap applies. I missed the nit and grit of Chicago, the ridiculous winds blowing in my face and the dangerous, albeit exciting, vampire runs Leon and I used to go on there and everywhere else. Seattle was much further than expected. Hell, Canada was closer to us than Seattle. Okay, probably not, I'm not so great with this type of thing. I also missed Mexico, especially Acapulco. The sweltering heat and the beaches are probably perfect right about now, it always was. Okay, well maybe it wasn't that hot, but I still missed it along with the copious amount of food served at every hour no matter where you were.

I got up and set my plate inside the sink, heading towards the cabinets in the wall of the left hallway that led to the kitchen. "Hey, should we stay in-state or go for out-of-state?"

"In-state. Easier to change school files for parking permit."

"Good call, Leon."

These cabinets held at least ten different license plates from every state plus another thirty from Canada and thirty from Mexico. These boys went everywhere we went and we made sure the spares never stuck around in the car. Last time we accidentally left one in there... well let's just say we had the FBI on us after we broke out of jail. I knelt down to the W's and found the drawer labeled "WA" in permanent marker. I opened it and pulled three plates at random, God forbid we make a choice and have that silly bitch pull a future sight on us.

Damn vampires making this job more of a hassle than an enjoyable job.

"So, what now Leon?"

He looked up at me over the papers, finishing the last bit of his egg. "No idea. We should just go for a drive. Beats being locked up in here." I nodded. Sure, some of the people were nice and sure, there was something to do somewhere in some backlot corner or something, hell if I know, but both of us needed the city air thick with gasoline and smog. We also both needed fresh air, away from all the people and the vampires.

"Meet you at the car in an hour?"

"Yeah."

***

Fully showered and adequately dressed, meaning I was wearing skinny jeans, knee-high suede boots, an ancient long-sleeve shirt and a puffy vest, I waited for Leon next to Thor, flipping my knife between my fingers. "Finally!"

He walked out wearing his reflective aviator sunglasses and his hair shining because it was still slightly wet. His jeans hung right at his hips, kept right about there and his white v-neck long sleeve with a brown leather belt. Once again, he wore his leather jacket and the same expensive John Varvatos Converse he sported basically every other day. Why yes, Leon is a complete label whore. A classy assassin? Surely you jest! you say. Reader, Leon is French. Of course he's a classy son of a bitch he spends more money than probably you and I combined on one suit.

Certainly pays off, bastard looks good in a suit.

Looks good without clothes too...

"Let me drive, think I got an idea of where to go."

I threw him the keys and got into the passenger's seat of the car, lifting up the handle and letting the seat recline.

Oh, maybe I should explain the no clothes bit. Or just let a flashback happen. Oh quiet down, you know you love them. Plus, it's a helluva lot better to read about something that already happened than the nothingness that will happen as we drive down a highway.

***

"_Mierde, mierde, mierde_," Leon repeated over and over quickly, spitting blood into a plastic cup continuously. We were fresh from raiding a stripper show that was themed vampires and, guess what, five of those girls were actually vampires. Way to be discreet.

I held a bag of ice across my eyebrow as we both walked briskly between the alternating-colored carpet that snaked between the slot machines through the Wynn hotel. We weren't standing for no motel shit, that was certain. A few people stared at us, but it was near three in the morning, so mostly everyone was either too tired, too drunk, or too interested in their gambling to care.

We were both sore and had bruises growing in strange places, but Leon had it far worse: he had been force-fed vampire blood from the first girl we had murdered by their ringleader. He didn't want to swallow that kind of thing, obviously, so his first instinct was to punch her in the face then start spitting all over the place like a wild animal. Things got messier than we expected and he still got a load of vampire blood in his mouth that he couldn't spit or swallow after we killed the small band.

Leon's eyebrows were scrunched and lined with worry and annoyance, holding back the blood in his mouth because the cup was about to overflow. Standing and waiting for an elevator, he tapped his foot incessantly. "Just calm down, you're making me even more nervous." He slit his eyes at me and slipped into an open elevator, punched the button labeled 17 and forced the door to close on a drunken couple.

On the way up, I rolled up a sleeve and put the bag of ice on my forearm, which was bruising a sickly purple and green and dotted with mashed maroon blood. I then pressed the bag onto Leon's jaw, which was showing signs of a bruise but not quite yet one. He grimaced slightly and set his forehead on mine, screwing up his face badly. I ran my fingers through his hair, trying to calm him down. Leon was trembling madly and was letting the blood drip out of his mouth and down his lip and chin.

Leon, the badass motherfucker with an unknown past, was scared for his life.

I wiped off the blood with the back of my gloved left hand, as I was holding the bag with said hand, leaving his chin somewhat smeared with a mix of his saliva, blood and vampire blood. The elevator door slid open and Leon shot out, dragging his bag full of guns and a disassembled sniper's rifle and holding his room key for room 17014.

"We were having a moment right there!" I snapped.

The door flew open and nearly closed on my nose, but luckily I had put my foot in the way to block it from closing completely. I threw my duffel bag into the room and left to buy myself a soda down the hallway. I also took the opportunity to refill the ice bag with more fresh ice and fill another bag up. The crick in my neck was bothering me and was impossible to pop, so I merely massaged it with my spare hand then placed the bag on it to let it cool off. More than anything, I wanted to get out of the armor and the clothes I was wearing, soaked with my blood, vampire blood, alcohol, holy water, tap water, and other things that I really didn't want to take a gander at.

Someone tripped over themselves and bumped into my back, adding more bruises to the ones I already had growing on my back. I saw a girl giggling wildly when I turned around, holding an empty bucket stamped with the Wynn logo on it. Girl was drunk as hell. Good thing too because I snatched the bucket at filled it with ice and took it with me.

"Hey, bitch you, you, cunt, bitch you!" she shouted in a slur. "Mine! That was, is mine!"

"Yeah, honey, not anymore. Go back to sucking some dick or whatever you were doing." I briskly walked towards the room and slammed the door behind me, dropping the two ice bags in the full bucket and setting it on the mini-bar.

God, the heat. The A/C was on and running, but the heat was stifling underneath all this armor. I undid the buckles of the insanely heavy bullet-proof vest, took off my knee and elbow pads and dropped them into a pile next to the door, underneath the vanity. My head was throbbing like a bitch and stung highly when I touched it with the tip of my middle finger. Great, another bruise on my head. I stripped myself of my bloody white shirt and black pants, setting them in a pile next to my armor.

My arms were covered with green splotches and trillions of nicks and cuts. A few of my cuts were caused by the vampires' insanely sharp hooker nails. What did they do, file them with knife sharpeners? Fucking hell, they stung even more now that I took off my shirt.

To my surprise, a small piece of the fake nail lodged itself inside one of the cuts.

How the fuck that even happened, I have no idea, but there it was, in all its jagged and half-painted, wine-red lacquer nail polished glory. I leaned on the bathroom door and I stepped inside as it opened, still poking at the cut trying to push it further out before going at it with a pair of tweezers.

The marble floor felt wet and cold, but I much preferred feeling that over the shoes I had been wearing earlier. I kept stepping on a few puddles, which I found a bit weird but for about less than a second because this damn nail just would not fucking move.

The truth of the matter was, reader, I was shanked.

Badly.

I kept walking straight, not looking up from my cut and the nail that blended in with the blood. Fucking strippers and their industrial nails made of steel and iron and shit. I bumped into something smooth, slightly hard, and very awkwardly shaped to be a wall, cabinet, or sink. It was also slick with water. I slowly, ever so slowly, peered over my forearm where the cut was.

My belly button was in full contact with a pair of male hips. My underwear and bra, mismatched ridiculously, were absorbing the water that dripped and rolled off Leon's naked, very muscular and toned body. When I pulled my arm to myself, I got something of an unexpected shot of his penis within my frame of vision and quite honestly, I didn't know how to react to it. I bit my lip as my inner workings began to conflict with themselves.

On the one hand, I could just rip off my clothes and have him take me then and there because he looked like he was a good fuck. He probably is.

On the other hand, I wanted to run the opposite direction because he was my partner and mixing business with pleasure involving the same person was neither his style nor mine.

Yet both of us just stood there, him leaning back on the sink, me getting my clothes or lack thereof more and more wet. It seemed Leon was debating the same issue I was.

"There's a set of needles and thread behind me," he began, breaking the silence.

I cleared my throat. "Right." I reached out next to his left arm and grabbed the small box, handing it to him. "I just need tweezers." I slid my small black bag to myself, turned right around and walked out, shutting the door behind me.

That must have been the first time I was turned on by my partner.

I got to my bed and sat on it, realizing one thing: Leon was hot as fuck and I didn't mind being turned on at all by him.

We had rented out another room for our weapons cache and any type of emergency, so I decided to grab some pajamas, take the toiletries I had brought out, and make a run for the room across this one so I could take a shower.

I took my time, letting the warm water from the shower head run down my body and clean out all the wounds. Leon got himself into more physical danger than I did, so I wound up with bruises and some minor cuts, unlike him who got himself gashes that he had to stitch himself. I pulled the fake nail out of the cut and dropped it down the drain. Nasty shit.

When I got out, it was roughly 4:30 AM. I wasn't exactly tired but I didn't want to stroll down the strip either. That was the problem with this life: you get used to not sleeping so that the moment you can afford sleep it doesn't come to you. I got into the room and noticed some of the lights and the TV were on.

"Leon?" I called out.

No answer. I trod carefully on the carpet, cautious not to step on our bags and clothes. Leon sat up straight, head propped against the headboard, staring blankly at the TV. He was wearing only pajama pants and idly holding one of the ice bags I had brought while his hair glinted and flashed with the changing lights of the scenes. His chest was strewn with several dozen stitches and were swollen harshly around each one. Most, if not all, of his bruises were dotted with crushed blood. His lip was cut open and still bleeding ever so slightly.

"You alright?"

By his standards, he was unusually quiet. Actually, he was acting very strangely all around and that alarmed me. He wasn't even smoking.

"Almost swallowed vampire blood."

"You spit it all out though?"

"Threw it up and then some."

I sighed heavily. The bags under his eyes were now more marked than ever because he was looking pale.

"You know... what happened earlier ---"

"Don't worry about it," he cut in.

Um. Alright.

I crawled into my bed and pulled the sheets over myself while I sat up like Leon to watch a bit of something random on the Discovery Channel. Leon got up from his bed and made his way over to mine, letting himself drop next to me and setting his head on my shoulder.

"You wanna talk?"

He shook his head very, very slowly.

I put an arm around him. He was exhausted and still very obviously shocked, though why I have yet to know. "Mind if I sleep with you like this?"

I laughed lightly and smiled. "Not at all."

We kept watching some Shark Week special that I still don't remember what was about. Leon breathed very slowly as if he was still trying to calm himself down while the smell of his shampoo and soap kept raiding my sense of smell continuously, to which I had no objection.

"Do that thing you did with my hair in the elevator," he said suddenly.

"Alright, chief," I joked, slipping my fingers through his hair. I wound his curly hair around my fingers and massaged his scalp.

"Better?"

He nodded slightly, eyes closed.

Leon, the badass motherfucker with an unknown past, had been scared for his life and all I could do to help him was give him a head rub.


End file.
